Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
In conversation with Mathieu Copeland, Graciela Carnevale will revisit her trajectory, from the Primary Structures sculptures of 1967, to her groundbreaking 1968 works Acción del Encierro (Confinement Action) and Tucumán Arde (Tucumán Is Burning)—a collective action that exposed the government’s abuses in the city of Tucumán. She will also reflect on later initiatives such as her co-organization of El Levante in 2003—an independent collective project designed to foster critical thinking through artistic practice—and, since 2023, La Huerta, a community garden in Rosario where aesthetics and ethics converge in the acts of connecting and building together: a place for shared learning, training, encounters, exchanges, dialogue, and profoundly political work.
The INSIDE/OUT public programme of lectures invites speakers and leading thinkers whose breadth of work, practice, thought and collaboration we feel will inspire all our students and staff across the wide range of disciplines in the Leeds School of Arts.
Graciela Carnevale was born in 1942, lives in Rosario, Argentina and has contributed to redefine what art can be. In October 1968, a year marked by intense societal and political revolutions paired with intense artistic radicality. Carnevale locked her unsuspecting audience inside a deliberately empty gallery on the opening night of her solo exhibition as part of the Ciclo de Arte Experimental in Rosario. She immediately left, allowing the situation to unfold on its own. This radical piece, blending political art, activism, and uncompromising action, is now considered one of the defining artworks of the 20th century.
Until recently a lecturer at the University of Rosario’s School of Arts and a member of the Red Conceptualismos del Sur, Carnevale has, throughout a life of constant exploration and experimentation, worked to establish collaborative practices that place the community at their core and embrace ecological concerns
